The invention relates to a linear unit which can be used, for example, as handling equipment of industrial production, to seize an object in order to move the latter in one or more predetermined directions by certain amounts, entered in advance. For the drive of the carriage serving as a tool support, preferably electromagnetically operated linear motors are used which, with simple design, ensure a precise positioning of the carriage. Such drives with a gear rack of magnetically conducted material as motor rotor and magnetizable motor stator are known in large number. A construction described in German Offenlegungsschrift 2,247,509 uses as a gear rack a flexible strip of magnetic material, which has rectangular openings, which are arranged on the entire length perpendicular to the direction of movement, and which strip is fixed in its entire length to a solid magnetic bar, the thickness of which is sufficient for closing the magnetic flux and for transference of its movement to an outside element. In the case of a specific embodiment, two strips of magnetic material are provided, which are attached on two opposite sides of a bar of rectangular cross-section guided on roller or ball bearings. Each strip is assigned a stator, which has several pole masses, which are provided with windings and at the same time each have a toothing. The mutually facing surfaces of the tooth structures formed in the strips and the pole masses lie in two parallel planes with an intermediate space, which forms the pole gap.